One for the Road
by melodrome
Summary: A quartet of oneshots taking place during You're Welcome 5x12. Mostly character development with a twist at the end.
1. One

_1. Between the hospital and the workplace_

"So," Cordelia said happily, swinging bags filled to the brim with new clothes. "What's the bad news you're trying to break to me carefully?"

"What do you mean?" Angel asked over-innocently, exchanging a glance with Wesley. Cordelia pretended that his action wasn't completely obvious and kept grinning.

"Well, you just spent almost a thousand dollars on stuff for me."

"So?"

"So, the last time you did that, you were trying to buy my forgiveness after firing me, so I figure something has to be going on, especially since it's _you_ coughing up the money, mister everything-used-to-cost-a-shilling."

"What, I can't miss you?" Angel said irritably.

"You can, but we barely had a thousand dollars put together last year. You didn't even wince when you took out your credit card. Which brings me to another point," she continued, scooting in front of Angel and standing in front of him to force him to stop walking. "Since when do you even have a credit card? And how can you, when the government doesn't even know you exist? Something seriously weird is going on, Angel, and I demand an explanation."

"She's right," Wesley said from beside Cordelia. "We have to tell her eventually."

Angel made a face. "I guess, but there are... better times, and we're right in the middle of one of L.A.'s most crowded malls, and..."

"Just spit it out," Cordelia said. "It can't be as bad as waking up to find out you've been asleep for the past ten months."

Angel shoved his hands in his pockets as though ashamed of something. "Well... I've been made CEO of--" Cordelia gasped and clasped hands to her face expectantly. "--Wolfram and Hart," Angel finished anti-climactically.

Cordelia stood, frozen except for her eyes, which drew into an expression of horror. "Well, I mean, for now, I've sort of been thinking about quitting, but--"

Suddenly she grinned broadly. "I knew I must have been dreaming. There's absolutely no way you'd spend that much on a pair of shoes," she said, beckoning at his feet, which were indeed sporting very expensive loafers. She looked to the ceiling and spun around in place. "It's a shame, I really loved some of those clothes. Like, really. It's like they were made for me. I guess they were made _by_ me."

"Cordelia," Angel started before Cordelia started shouting to the ceiling.

"Okay, Powers. Ha-ha. You've made your funny joke, making me dream about Angel and his new 'career' at Wolfram and Hart. You can stop with the coma-dream now. Really, I'm good. I don't mind just sitting in that hospital bed for another however-long." Cordelia was starting to gather a crowd, and Angel stepped forward and grabbed her arm tightly.

"Cordelia," he said sincerely. "You're not dreaming."

Cordelia looked at Angel's hand on her arm. He was applying enough pressure to make it hurt, but not too much. She quickly turned red and grabbed her bags. "I don't believe it," she muttered as she pushed through the small crowd, heading toward the nearest door. Angel started after her, but Wesley held him back.

"I'll go," he said. "You bring the car around from the hospital."

"I--" Angel started, but Wesley shook his head.

"The explanation as to why we're heading a corporation we've been hot-footing around for years won't sound convincing coming from the CEO," Wesley reasoned. Angel eventually nodded in reply, and Wesley quickly followed the brunette through the doors.


	2. Two

_2. Between the conversation with Angel and the discovery of the Glyphs_

"Glyphs, you say?" Wesley said curiously after he and Cordelia had exercised all the small talk they could take. They were sitting in his office, he at his desk and she on a comfy sofa in the far corner of the room. She drew the symbols she'd seen as she explained. "Were they Egyptian? Greek?"

"Yes, Wesley, because I can recognize the origin of a symbol just by seeing a vague picture of it in a coma-vision," she replied playfully. Wesley smiled back.

"I'm sorry. I'm so used to everyone knowing more than I do around here, asking that sort of question becomes habit," he admitted. Cordelia smiled dimly in reply and kept drawing. "You still don't understand, do you?" Wesley asked after a few moments.

"No, I don't," she said angrily. "I don't get why Angel agreed to it, since this company has been trying to manipulate him from the get-go and now he seems to be opening the door for them to do whatever they want with him. I kinda get why Gunn did it, and Lorne... they got something out of it, they're in their element here. But overall, I'm most confused about you and Fred. I mean, you two are the smartest people I've ever met. Fred spent five years in a hell dimension, and now she's working for the company who probably helped send her there. You knew Lilah for long enough to have known at least a few of the inner workings of the company before you were even offered the position. Of all the people who would have known what they were getting into, you five would have been it, and yet I wake up from a coma and know from the get-go what a huge mistake it was accepting this job."

Wesley nodded and smiled as she finished. "As ever, it's not quite that simple," he said quietly.

"So I've heard, and I've also heard that you think you can 'change the system', but this is Wolfram and Hart. You guys get that, right? Huge, multi-dimensional power figure that no one knows anything about except how evil it is? There's no way you can fight them this way, especially not when they're paying you an incredible six-figure salary."

"Seven, actually," Wesley muttered.

Cordelia raised her eyebrows. "Okay, now I'm understanding a bit more of the 'why'."

Wesley chuckled as he wandered over to the sofa and sat beside Cordelia. "It wasn't just a matter of changing the system. The resources we have access to as a team tends to dictate how much good we can do. With Angel Investigations, we had very few resources at our disposal. We dealt good on a small scale accordingly; eliminating vampire nests, the occasional poltergeist in the attic. Here, we were able to stop a man from setting off a bomb, embedded in his son, while he was at school, in our first week."

"Uh-huh," Cordelia said skeptically. "And where is this man now?"

Wesley hesitated. He was walking the streets, a free man. "Let's not get caught up in the details," he said hastily, standing with Cordelia's completed sketches in hand. "Hmm. These look like some kind of rune. I'll have my team research them, we'll see if we can't find out what they mean." He began to leave the room.

Cordelia's mind was reeling. She was stunned at how ignorant they all were at how corrupted they'd become, even during their short time here. From the moment she'd stepped into the building, she'd known she wouldn't be able to stay. It was time for a change. "Wesley," she called after him.

"Yes?" he asked, jogging back into the room and regarding Cordelia pleasantly.

She hesitated. She couldn't say anything yet; she just wasn't quite ready. She put a slight smile on her face in spite of what was going on inside her head. Who said acting wasn't for her? "Forget your team. Let's you and I crack the books ourselves, like we used to."

Wesley thought for only a second before cracking a wide grin. "What a wonderful idea," he said, striding back over to his desk and piling the volumes into some semblance of order.  



	3. Three

**A/N:** The first six paragraphs contain actual dialogue from the episode. I did not write the first six paragraphs. All of the dialogue in the following chapter is also directly from the episode, and by no means do I wish to take credit for it. I just ended things a bit differently. :)

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_  
3. Between the discovery of the Glyphs and the fight with Lindsey_

"You didn't kill Lilah," Wesley said darkly.

"I know," Cordelia said shakily. "Still, I'm sorry." They were taking a break from the research to talk about what had happened when she was possessed. Wesley, arguably one of those hurt the most by Cordy's crusade, was the only one really willing to talk to her about it. He fully trusted her. Now she knew she could trust him. "I just wanted to tell you that before--" she started before looking over to a shifting book by happenstance, and catching sight immediately of the Glyphs. "Hey! That's them," she exclaimed, handing him the book and the sketch of what she'd seen. "Those. The tats. Look."

"Protection runes derived from the Enochian alphabet," Wesley read aloud. "The ones from your vision are symbols, some kind of concealment spell. 'Clouds before the all-seeing eyes'."

"Mmm," Cordelia said knowingly. "This part I didn't miss. Cryptic poetry." She sat back down on the desk.

"They protect the bearer from being viewed remotely from higher powers, seers, mystics. Or, transposed to today, any means of modern surveillance."

"Somebody really wants to stay hidden," Cordelia said, exchanging a significant glance with Wesley, who returned the glance before scanning the page in search of more information.

"We'd better give Angel what we have," Wesley said with resolve, snapping the book closed seconds later and turning toward the door. "If whoever has these tatoos is planning something..." Wesley looked around to notice that Cordelia wasn't following him. "Coming?" he asked curiously.

Cordelia smiled nervously and looked at her feet. "Can I ask you for a big favour?"

Wesley frowned and closed the door to his office before walking over and facing her. "Of course. Anything."

She smiled at him tearfully. "I can't stay here," she whispered. "This place isn't for me. It's for you, and Angel, and Gunn, and Lorne. I hate to admit it, but you guys do fit in here." Wesley scoffed in amusement, trying to figure out if this was meant to be offensive of now. "But me, I stand out. I'm an expat valley girl who should have been an actress. Now I've been in a coma for months after having been a higher power and given birth to a demon who was fathered by..." Cordelia trailed off, seeing the expression on Wesley's face and remembering that he didn't know Connor. She shook her head. "There's something else I have to do, and I can't do it here."

Wesley nodded sympathetically. "I understand."

Cordelia impressed a grateful look upon Wesley. "I knew you would. Angel, on the other hand..."

"Ah. You'd like me to convince him for you?"

Cordelia hesitated. She could do this. "In a manner of speaking," she said before launching into her explanation.  



	4. Four

_4. One for the road_

Cordelia touched Angel's face. She was already crying, and his eyes were brimming with tears too. "I'll be seeing you," she half-whispered, backing away for one last look before turning and walking away. She fingered the small bottle in her pocket. Seeing the clock on the opposite wall, she suddenly turned on her heel on a whim. "Oh, what the hell," she said to herself walking back toward Angel. "One for the road?"

They kissed for what felt like forever. The phone rang, and Cordelia brought herself back to reality. But she couldn't turn away; they pressed foreheads and cried quietly together.

"You know, um... I don't... I don't need to get that," Angel whispered.

"No," she said, finally getting a grip on herself. She backed away and straightened his tie. "That you have to get." She smiled at him encouragingly as he turned slowly away and strode toward the phone.

Cordelia swiftly took the small bottle out of her pocket and downed its contents before Angel had picked up the receiver. Instantly, a feeling like ice spread to her fingers, which she could no longer see; just as Wesley had guaranteed, she had disappeared.

Careful not to make noise, Cordelia stepped carefully out of her heels and picked them up. She crept to the doorway and glanced once more at Angel before heading toward the stairs. "But that's impossible," she heard him say. "She's standing right--"

By the time she got to the bottom of the stairs, she was running. She threw open the front doors and kept running down the sidewalk, making it two blocks before feeling the warmth spread back into her fingers.

Slamming the door to her hotel room shut eight blocks later, she sank down against it and broke down completely. When she got a hold of herself, she stood to regard the documents strewn over the bed: passport, birth certificate, driver's licence; it was all here.

"You really _do_ work the best mojo in town," she muttered to herself. She sighed and sat on the bed.

Today Cordelia Chase gave up everything she knew and loved, including her life.

Today Karen Carpentier was born. And she had the whole world, and an old friend's salary for the month, at her disposal.

First stop was definitely Sunnydale.

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**A/N:** Yes, I am planning a sequel. :)

Thanks for reading! I hope you enjoyed.


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